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cbrain

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 9, 2006
1,049
0
North-East, UK
My new imac has Safari on it. On my old P.C I used Firefox. Would it be worth using Firefox instead of Safari on my new imac?
 
I've just got a new imac fter switching from pc and the first thing i did was download firefox. But I actually ended up preferring safari
 
I'm a Firefox user myself - the main reason I use it instead of Safari is because of some handy extensions I use that aren't available for Safari. If you find the extensions useful, or find some feature in Firefox to be too good to live without, I'd switch.

Personally, what I'd recommend that you do is download and try Firefox. If you like it, keep using it. If you don't, go back to Safari.
 
u could search this forum, there are more than 100 posts about this topic. even polls.
 
there are countless threads already on the subject. in my experience, Firefox has always been the most unreliable of the Mac browsers and that's why i stick to Safari. you might be interested in Camino, which is designed specifically for Mac OSX by the same people who make Firefox.
 
I love firefox for it's incredible expandability and speed. I know people who sware by safari but I can't stand using it personally. It's up to you in the long run though.
 
personally i like safari better but then again thats just one mans opnion. do what you like and what works the best for you...thats all there is to it.
 
Firefox and Thunderbird are my lone holdouts from my PC days (a long 4 months ago!) b/c of expandability and familiarity. I may switch to mail when I graduate and have to set up another client, but we'll see. I'm looking forward to FF 3.0 and it's full mac native build (right? Cocoa based or something? Correct me if I'm wrong), but Camino just doesn't have the extensions I need.
 
Safari

In the multiple polls and ten zillion posts on this subject, Safari always beats out Firefox, who is a close second, with Camino and various others trailing far behind.

Also, in benchmarks, Safari is both faster than, and more web-standards-compliant than FireFox (the later will probably change with FireFox 3).
 
and more web-standards-compliant than FireFox (the later will probably change with FireFox 3).

Not really. It can pass the acid2 test, big whoop, it's been proven that that has no effect on how well the browser stands up to regular day-to-day sites. In my personal experience, firefox supports more websites than safari does fully, and I couldn't live without never seeing an ad (Adblock Plus and Filterset.g, auto updating, no work ever)
 
Not really. It can pass the acid2 test, big whoop, it's been proven that that has no effect on how well the browser stands up to regular day-to-day sites. In my personal experience, firefox supports more websites than safari does fully, and I couldn't live without never seeing an ad (Adblock Plus and Filterset.g, auto updating, no work ever)

So, in other words, Safari is more web-standards-compliant than FireFox. It has nothing to do with whether or not certain web-sites block the use of Safari because they don't know what it is.

FireFox looks like crap on a Mac, BTW. In fact, I think that might be one of the biggest complaints about it out there.
 
After reading this topic I went and downloaded Firefox. As a mac user I never really thought of having to use firefox because I thought that safari was the best browser ever. But now I'm hooked on firefox. I think it looks so much more sleeker and stylish. But it's still up to you, I personally like firefox better.
 
FireFox looks like crap on a Mac, BTW. In fact, I think that might be one of the biggest complaints about it out there.

Haha, I have no idea what you're talking about, firefox looks great on all platorms including the Mac, especially when you apply UNO to make it more resemble the Apple Unified theme, maybe you're thinking of a pre-2.0 version? :rolleyes:

After reading this topic I went and downloaded Firefox. As a mac user I never really thought of having to use firefox because I thought that safari was the best browser ever. But now I'm hooked on firefox. I think it looks so much more sleeker and stylish. But it's still up to you, I personally like firefox better.

Absolutely, if you want to really increase your Firefox experience try downloading Adlbock Plus ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/ ) and Filterset.g ( https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1136/ ). Although that's only if you never want to be bothered with ads again and have much faster loading times because of it ;)
 
Haha, I have no idea what you're talking about, firefox looks great on all platorms including the Mac, especially when you apply UNO to make it more resemble the Apple Unified theme, maybe you're thinking of a pre-2.0 version? :rolleyes:

HAHAH I'm talking about the disgusting FireFox controls. Maybe you can extend FireFox to change it, but the standard controls are a straight-up port from Windows 9x. This is version 2.0 whatever the current one is that I just downloaded for this thread:

Picture 1.png

Now how can anyone try and tell me those check boxes, pull-down menus, and buttons look better than the Safari ones? Especially on a Mac.
 
To be honest I could care less what the pull down menus and check boxes look like inside firefox. Apple is moving away from the glossed over jellybean look anyway, just look at the new iTunes 7.

It's not about looks anyway, it's about performance and expandability, and Firefox bests Safari in both those areas.

And if you absolutely must have aqua controls, thanks to Firefox's open source nature, there are various builds that allow you to do so:

http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2006/12/24/firefox-2001
 
It's not about looks anyway, it's about performance and expandability, and Firefox bests Safari in both those areas.

Um, no it clearly does not beat Safari or any other WebKit-based browser in performance in any benchmark I've ever seen (and there are enough of those out there). And for expandability, well I can say I care less about adding tons of pointless plug-ins to search various web sites or post photos to a blog, then how good the browser looks.

Incidentally, WebKit is also open source. Because of this, Safari also has some plug-ins of it's own, probably more than any one person would need.
 
Um, no it clearly does not beat Safari or any other WebKit-based browser in performance in any benchmark I've ever seen (and there are enough of those out there). And for expandability, well I can say I care less about adding tons of pointless plug-ins to search various web sites or post photos to a blog, then how good the browser looks.

Incidentally, WebKit is also open source.

Pointless plugins? That's a laugh. Integrated bugmenot support? Get the add-on. Blocking of elements like ad banners and auto-updating lists? Get the add-on. Want to sync bookmarks between computers and Operating systems (Foxmarks)? Get the add-on. Want to have an ultra fast integrated FTP program (Fireftp)? Get the add-on. The list goes on and on. These are a far cry from pointless.

I also fail to see how a web page could load faster when it has to grab ads from various servers to display on page, but maybe you could refute that some how :)
 
I also fail to see how a web page could load faster when it has to grab ads from various servers to display on page, but maybe you could refute that some how :)

It's called a rendering engine. FireFox (Mozilla) and Safari (WebKit) use completely different ones.

I think I've made my point, which is basically, if you do not care about tons of plug-ins, Safari is a better choice, because it is faster and more Mac-like than FireFox.
 
It's called a rendering engine. FireFox (Mozilla) and Safari (WebKit) use completely different ones.

The rest of your post is tiring. I think I've made my point, which is basically, if you do not care about tons of plug-ins, Safari is a better choice.

Your posts are the fanboy-ish tiring ones. I think I've made my point as well. Choose Firefox if you care about expandability and performance.
 
Your posts are the fanboy-ish tiring ones. I think I've made my point as well. Choose Firefox if you care about expandability and performance.

Claiming performance without back up (which I have) is a sign of fan-boy. FireFox 2 did not re-write the rendering engine, by the way.

You are all about plug-ins. I'm obviously all about performance.

For anyone too lazy to look at that page, here is a nice graphic from it that pretty much sums-up my stance:

4_loading.jpg

In all the tests, the commercial OmniWeb is the fastest yet. I personally switch between Safari, WebKit, and Camino for various reasons. Even a little IE 7 now and then for checking how it renders things. But in terms of FireFox vs Safari - Safari wins the performance test.
 
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